(Yicai) Oct. 23 -- A standards center and associated laboratory were launched in Shanghai yesterday to promote mutual recognition of test results for in vitro diagnostic testing equipment in China.

Located in Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, the Shanghai In Vitro Diagnostics Standard Center is China’s first to adopt international advanced standards and to harmonize and standardize medical test results. 

It will focus on unstandardized in vitro diagnostic testing items that are of great clinical significance, and explore mutual recognition and the sharing of clinical test results to reduce the waste of medical resources.

“In vitro diagnosis is the gold standard for medical innovation,” said Wang Kairong, deputy general manager of Zhangjiang Group, the company responsible for the park’s development. “Its market share in the global medical device field is 13 percent, above other segments.”

Shanghai has industrial advantages for promoting the standardization of in vitro diagnosis and also an urgent need for it, Wang said. There are already 65 in vitro diagnostic enterprises in Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, including 31 molecular diagnostic enterprises and 19 immunodiagnostic enterprises.

Siemens Healthineers and Abbott Diagnostics, the major in vitro diagnosis reagent makers in the world, also have businesses in Zhangjiang, Wang added.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Tom Litting